Directors are increasingly looking at Australian novels for celluloid inspiration. Lawrie Zion reports.

Whatever it's remembered for, 2003's written-for-the-screen crime capers and bad buddy comedies are unlikely to be recalled favourably by historians of Australian film. And following the more recent box-office failure of the ambitious but wildly uneven local drama, One Perfect Day, 2004 isn't off to a great start, either.

Yet, while industry conferences continue to mull over what to do about the national deficit of original screenplays featuring well-rounded characters and compelling narratives, not to mention the perilous writer-director multi-tasking endemic to novice feature filmmakers, several of the country's more experienced directors are literally adopting a novel approach to their next projects.

"I'm going back to the books," said Gillian Armstrong when asked how she planned to uncover her next project.

The thinking behind this is simple enough: books have been road-tested, and the more celebrated of them have ready-made audiences.

Armstrong, of course, has been down that track many times before. Her first film, My Brilliant Career, like other 1970s classics such as Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Getting of Wisdom, drew on the nation's early literary pedigree to create a "new wave" of Australian cinema.

Since then, numerous novels have made the leap from page to screen, and some have proved successful with critics and at the box office - Looking for Alibrandi and Rabbit-Proof Fence being two of the most recent examples.

The latter - an AFI best film winner in 2002 - was Phillip Noyce's first Australian film in 16 years. And now Noyce is preparing to direct adaptations of two more Australian novels: Tim Winton's Dirt Music, and Kate Jennings's Moral Hazard.

In the case of Dirt Music, which centres on the intertwined fortunes of a triangle of drifters on the West Australian coast, Noyce is all too aware of the challenges that lie ahead.

"He's not an easy writer to adapt," Noyce says. "Because of the elusive poetry of his language, you have got to keep trying things and go back to the novel."

And while he and producer Miranda Culley have enlisted the skills of writer Justin Monjo to adapt the book, Noyce says that Winton has also been closely involved.

"We're always considering whether it works as a film, but you also have to weigh up whether it's also consistent with his intentions. For this reason, he's read the screenplay drafts and has been participating in discussions with directions we can take in adaptation.

"If we pull it off, we will automatically inherit, in the case of Dirt Music, a huge Australian audience. And, given the recent difficulties that Australian films have had in finding their audience, this is one potential way of motivating them to go to the cinema."

And not just Australian audiences. As American literary talent scout Maria Campbell put it to ABC radio during the recent Adelaide Writers' Festival, Australian authors could be a "terrific source" for big-screen stories.

"I think some of the themes of displacement and homelessness are things that, given what the American society also represents and has represented socially and historically, find a common ground with an American reader."

But not all Australian novels heading for the big screen take on these overtly parochial themes. Another of Noyce's works-in-progress, Moral Hazard, is set mostly in New York City, where a 40-year-old Australian expat faces dilemmas when her husband succumbs to the early onset of Alzheimer's disease.

"It's an extraordinary love story about a woman who only starts to live when she has to live with death - and it's the death that is precipitated by her own hand by killing her husband seven years into dementia." Though Noyce admits it's not specifically an Australian novel, he says, "I hope it ends up being classified as an Australian film because it's written by a woman from my home town of Griffith and all the main creatives are Australian, except for John Romano, who is doing the adaptation."

Other Australian novels with a contemporary theme are also making the journey to the big screen. Now in the middle of its shoot in Melbourne is Three Dollars. Starring David Wenham, Frances O'Connor and Sarah Wynter, the film is based on Melbourne barrister Elliot Perlman's 1998 novel (and Age book of the year) about a man trying to retain his sense of humour in an era of corporate downsizing.

"Australian novels are the first port of call for Australian producers," says co-producer and director Robert Connolly, who wrote and directed The Bank.

"Most producers look with a keen eye to see what's coming out with new Oz literature. But I've always been disappointed that Australian cinema turned away from exploring our history. After the boom of '80s mini-series, it was deemed that costume dramas weren't cool. In the US and UK, they have mythologised the past through contemporary eyes. If anything is untapped here, it's that our writers haven't delved into our past."

Connolly became interested in filming Three Dollars after filmmaker Daniel Nettheim gave him a copy of the novel for his 30th birthday several years ago.

"I came back to it after making The Bank and after getting married and having a baby.

"When I first read it, I found it funny, but the thematic richness of the book also packed a punch."

But Connolly, who is also producing an adaptation of the Raymond Gaita novel Romulus, My Father, which will be directed by Richard Roxburgh, admits to sweating over structural issues as Three Dollars is transformed into a movie.

"Like with many books, you need to refine characters and make some narrative leaps. One of the challenges has been moving from a book that pretty much tells the story of a man's life in linear order, to being about a man with a crisis investigating his life - a detective story of the heart."

And while - like Noyce - Connolly believes that the popularity of the novel provides an audience base when first marketing the film, the process of adaptation remains, for him, a double-edged sword.

"Look at the poor results for films like The Human Stain or Charlotte Gray. And there are as many films that failed in the market that are based on great books. Success of the underlying work is helpful, but the magic that is needed to make a movie work for an audience is much more complicated."